Nav Station Needed?

[Siamese]

My Catalina 309 has a layout that serves us pretty well for the type of sailing we do. I wonder if most sailboat owners, especially those in the under 50 foot cruiser range sail like we do....mostly day and weekend sailing with a couple week to 2 week sail vacations per season.

On a 31 foot boat, cubic feet are in limited supply, and, as Robert Perry pointed out in a recent thread about interiors, there's only so much you're going to do with the odd interior shape that a sailboat offers. I've toyed with the idea of adding a basement to my boat, but with limited success, so I've concluded I'm limited to the amount I started with.

To make a better interior ("better" meaning one more suited to my purposes as the average sailor), the most that can be done is to shuffle the size and placement of the existing components and/OR, eliminating anything that's unnecessary. That leads me directly to the nav station. Aside from providing a handy little junk drawer, it serves no real purpose on my boat. And remember, it uses the space from the cabin sole to the cabin roof - that's a LOT of space. When I want to look at a chart, I just use the galley table. The nav table isn't big enough to accommodate a chart book. Definitely not one that's laid open.

From my perspective, the nav station could be GONE, freeing up cubic feet to be used elsewhere...like the HEAD. Yeah...use the extra feet in the head, line the whole thing with fiberglass so it's a good shower, and PUT AN EXHAUST FAN IN THE &*@$ING THING!! Or how about a double sink in the galley?

Give me something I can really use. Or is the Nav station on a 31 foot boat intended for weekend coastal cruising some sort of sacred cow?

[Loki9]

My P30 never had a nav station. They certainly aren't a necessity.

[paulk]

Nav stations are nice if you are setting out charts,calculating the lat/long sights that you took with your sextant, trying to hear long range weather forecasts on the ssb, or communicating with commercial traffic in places like the Houston Ship Channel or approaches to New York harbor. Doesn't sound like you need one much. Have some hamburger.

[ctl411]

I took mine out and made a new fridge in the space, can still use the top as a table.

[CaptainForce]

I'd stand with those that claim the nav station is not necessary. There's been a trend over the last thirty years to move more nav equipment to the binnacle. Technology has allowed instrumentation to be small, weather protected and without vacuum tubes and paper. I still will spread out a paper chart on my table below or keep a paper chart pack in the cockpit, but a designated nav station is archaic for my needs. I still keep radio communication equipment and monitors below, but they are small, bulkhead mounted and don't require a "station". Take care and joy, Aythya crew

[DRFerron]

If you don't use it, it is a waste of space.

I tried to imagine if ours was gone. It is located near the companionway stairs, easy to stand at it, lean back and talk to the person at the helm. The batteries, equipment manuals, notebooks containing various navigational information, ship and maintenance log books, Eldridge's tide book and cruising guides are stored underneath. The battery panel is above it, the fixed radio to the right. There are also slots containing the chartplotting tools, flares, winch handles. The GPS puck sits on the table, as does the netbook plugged into the 12v outlet. The shelf above holds various marina and tourist brochures. The table lid lifts to have access to the battery charger, various electronic tools and spare parts.

Before sailing we use the table to look over the paper chart while listening to the weather report, set up the netbook, go over our pre-underway checklist.

If we didn't have the nav station all of that would be scattered around the boat. I wouldn't want that.

[Faster]

I don't use ours for 'navigation'... but it's one of the most comfortable seats on the boat. Ours provides quite a lot of useful storage below, and above the seat and table so it's not really wasted. It's a natural spot to stow frequently needed tools, the log, and chartbooks; it's a good place to fill out said log book.

Necessary probably not, but I like ours.

[PBzeer]

Mine suits my purposes and is where I spend my time when not horizontal.

[wingNwing]

I don't "navigate" from the nav station, as most of ours is done in the cockpit, and planning is done at the main salon table. However, as a fulltime liveaboard on a 33 foot boat, the nav station is where the laptop lives, where we sit to think, write, pay bills, etc. I wouldn't want to be without it. I sit there several hours a day, working.

[RobGallagher]

If I ever get a boat with a nav station I'm gonna instal a flat screen with an Xbox360 so I can play pirate games.